Sunday, December 7, 2014

New Companion From St. George And Snakes Coming Out of Their Mouths

Tjena!!!

Hejsan allihoppa!! It sounds like everyone is doing super well and I am really glad to hear it :) I have had a really interesting week and the first week that I have started training my new companion. His name is Äldste Jones, he is from Saint George Utah and he just graduated from high school. He is crazy excited to be out in Sweden and the language will come fast for him. We had to spend the first two days in Stockholm because we had zone training the day after I picked him up and then we didn't go to bed till 1 in the morning on Thursday night because of the night ferry. So he has been battling some good jet lag this week and I let him sleep a little bit today since its P-day and I figured I didn't want a zombie companion :P He played tennis and basketball and wants to go to UVU or USU when he goes home.... I wonder which one he will choose after me... ingen vet haha. Yeah, hes a great guy and we will definitely have a different companionship than elder held and I did but I think it will be something fresh that this branch needs and we are excited to see it grow.

I think the best thing about training is the look on his face when the casheir asks him something or when we are tracting and he just looks at me like these people have snakes coming out of their mouth. I think its funny because I was there not so many months ago and I am just really grateful for the Lords help in how much I can communicate now and I am able to really understand the Swedish people and help them through real concerns they have and questions that they ask us. I think we are going to do really good together and I hope that I can train him well enough that he will have the ability to train after these 12 weeks. That is the goal with all training.

One thing that was really cool was going on the ferry that Thursday night. We met someone on the train over and sat with him on the ferry and talked with him for 4 hours. He was super cool and we were able to teach him that whole first lesson and after that he started drinking so it was hard to keep ahold of him completely haha. But, he did say that he would never do something like this when he was our age and so he trusts in the things that we say because of our resolve to share what we have with other people. I thought that was super cool that he would think that and even though we dont have much life experiences it almost gives us more credibility in missionary work because people are interested as to why we decided to come and do this crazy thing for 2 years and what we are doing in Sweden and how we came to that conclusion as 19 year olds. That is one thing that I have been able to develop a testimony about is when it talks in the scriptures and says that by small things will great things come to pass. Well that is what the Lord is doing and that is what I am able to see every day is that happening here in the mission field.

We were blessed enough to eat thanksgiving dinner on saturday with the Blombergs!! They are a half American half Swedish family and the father is a linguist and knows like 5 languages fluently... he speaks all of them like a native speaker actually its nuts. Right now hes learning Arabic so they can move to Jordan. Dont ask me why I dont know why Jordan haha but they are so cool. It is them and their 5 little kids and we were able to have dinner with them and then share the spiritual thought which is what the church ahs come out with called the initiative. If you dont know the church has taken over YouTube with this movie that they have made about the real gift of Christmas which is Jesus Christ. It is super good and I love that clip. Its about 2 minutes long and this whole month we are given some pass along cards with it and they have the clip that we show on our phone to people that we contact on the street and we are able to get the real meaning of christmas and the church out super fast. I love the fact that we can just bear our testimonies so fast on our savior and have this time of year that everyone loves and everyone can feel the spirit of. So definitely share that film as much as you can. You can see it at christmas.mormon.org #sharethegift. Seriously super cool way to "flood the Earth" with the message than by taking over the internet.

I love all of you and I am so glad everyone is doing well!! We are doing super good on the island and we hope to continue to see the work progress here and see this branch grow!